Shannon’s last post on the new population predictions scaring the world and generating many headlines is an excellent read. One of the scariest things I think about these predictions is how they might be used by policy makers and politicians to agitate for population control measures. Especially if those policy makers come from a country that has the most brutal population control measures in the world: China. Well, right away China is jumping in and pointing to its “stellar” population control measures as an example to us all. According to the People Daily Online:

“A Chinese representative on Monday called on the international community to work together to include the issue of population in the post-2015 development agenda. Li Bin, minister in charge of the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China, made the appeal here at a special session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on the follow-up to the Program of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).”

If African countries will not voluntarily stop having too many children (and making us Western nations feel guilty about our overconsumption), we’ll get the Chinese in to show them how it’s done:

“To effectively implement the follow-up to the ICPD Program of Action beyond 2014, ‘we should work together to include the issue of population in the post-2015 development agenda, and provide more support to developing countries,’ Li told the UNGA.”

What can she have been meaning by way of support? Well, presumably this support draws upon the Chinese example of population control.

“In her speech, Li stressed that in the view of the Chinese government, ‘the issue of population is ultimately a development issue.’

‘Since ICPD, the Chinese government, based on its national conditions, has taken a comprehensive approach in addressing the issues of the quantity, quality, structure and distribution of the population,’ she said.

‘We have implemented a family planning program which has effectively slowed down the excessively fast population growth,’ she said.

‘As a result, economic and social development has been advanced, and people's livelihood has shown remarkable improvement,’ she added.”

Yes, everyone’s livelihood has shown remarkable improvement. Except the forcibly aborted children of course. (But shhhhh! There were only 330 million of them!)
Let’s be clear what the implications are of Chinese population control and what Li is advocating as a model for other countries with high fertility rates (read sub-Saharan Africa) to follow. These implications can be seen from a trawl through this blog’s archives. We’ve talked many times about the evil nature of the one child policy. For example: So African nations please ignore Chinese efforts to help with your population “problem”. The “cure” is worse than the “disease”.
The rest of us need to remember that when we see dire predictions of global population growth this century that it will mainly be happening in Africa. In terms of resource consumption Africans on average consume far less than us in West. Secondly, when people talk about "controlling" population growth, it won't be directed at the West, but at Africa. Let us hope that the evil Chinese template for population control is not copied elsewhere.